Resurrection
by Upeasterner
Summary: The other ghost in Carolyn Muir's life rematerializes, with dire consequences.
1. Chapter 1

"Madame – are you awake?" I shift in the Adirondack chair and wince at the arthritis in my shoulder. The Captain leans over me from behind, his arms across my chest. My hair is short, brittle and bottle-ash blonde, but he nuzzles my wrinkly face anyway. "Mmmmm, is this the fake 80-year-old Daniel or the 45-year-old ghost of my dreams?" I demurely inquire. He insists on aging himself at times. I'm really not vain but I am horribly insecure about the inexorable toll the years have taken on my body, and how it might affect his desire for me. "It's the lover of all your ages," he replies suavely, but I can tell from his voice the young Daniel Gregg is behind me. "Madame," he chides, always able to sense my thoughts. "No matter how old you get, I'm still 100 years ahead of you." I've heard this many, many times, but it always placates my inappropriate vanity. Still, when I die, will I be 35 again, physically, or remain a ghostly Cougar for the ages? He lifts me and carries me from our balcony to the large antique bed we have shared for 41 years. I spin the polished telescope in passing. Daniel closes the French doors, and when he turns, I see both the aged Captain and the young Captain twinkling, together in the same dimension. We lay in our bed, my head on his shoulder, my arm across his chest.

I am an old withered woman, now. In my mind, it's still 1968 and I'm young, vibrant and waving at Captain Gregg from down on the beach. Jonathan and Candy are running in the surf, not off lawyering in Augusta or serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. I'm starting a new life, a new adventure. Martha is alive, Scruffy too. Claymore's still in the closet and Ed Peavey is "the law" in Schooner Bay. I am physically, if that's the word, much younger than the ghost of Gull Cottage. Life is ahead of us, the past buried hundreds of miles to the south in Philadelphia. We don't have enough money, but I'm young, determined and don't care. We are at the center of our own universe, happy and healthy, and it doesn't even seem strange to have added a poltergeist to our most unconventional family.

I recall kissing that ghost's surprisingly substantive lips on a charmingly dark and stormy night, as he blustered over some thing historically quite irrelevant. It's perhaps the only time I ever caught him truly off guard – and it worked! Claymore officiates at our hasty, impromptu, if not fully legal wedding that weekend. Jonathan hands Daniel a golden band and I am a not a wife again, but the pampered and fully loved consort of an otherworldly Captain who vows to watch over me until…what? Til death do we join again? For the moment, the Captain is simply satisfied the children will never think he took sexual advantage of their mother while I am secretly taking advantage of him! Life is gloriously corporeal, incorporeal, wonderfully gothic, often anachronistic but happily, happily ours in the cottage by the sea.

The Captain's asleep now. Were he awake, he would put an immediate halt to this train of thought. Pleasant as it seems, it's a one-way ticket to sorrow. Tomorrow is a very unpleasant anniversary of sorts. He and I have been over this so many times. How could I ever forget what happened on tomorrow's date, over 35 years ago? It sends me hurtling back to the past every year, to the exact moment I almost became forever trapped in a nightmare not of my own making, when time rushed out to sea like a retreating wave at low tide – and never returned. Even Daniel cannot erase from my mind the events of that day when time stopped then ran backwards, away from the beach, Gull Cottage and Captain Gregg.

I visualize myself all too well, in the moment before everything almost ended, on my knees in the front garden, trowel in hand, wondering whether the peonies really have a chance this summer. Candy's blaring Beatles music out the window. I think she's played Let It Be 100 times, but it's a huge improvement over the inane Partridge Family. Daniel and Jonathan are nowhere to be found, which isn't at all unusual. Martha's talking to Ed on the phone. Scruffy's out back, sunning himself at the top of the stairs leading to our private beach. I've finished all assignments so my editors have no reason to call. The day is mine.

I'm so used to the shriek of the gulls and the quite literal roar of the surf, that at first I don't hear the sound of crunching gravel. I miss the slam of the car door. I'm still squatting beside the flower bed when two large feet swing out of the driver's side and plant themselves firmly on the other side of the car. I wipe my forehead and stand. I expected one of Candy's girlfriends to pop out of the passenger side any moment. This isn't what happens. For a moment, I can't think. Inexplicably rooted to the pavestone, I stare. staring. Blood starts rushing in my ears and my lungs remind me it's time to breathe. Strange, I can neither breathe nor see. Some unheralded blackness hurtles toward me like a wave on the beach, and I drown.


	2. Chapter 2

"Daniel?"

My head hurts. I try to sit up but that arthritic shoulder hurts too much. My arm doesn't want to move up and backwards onto the pillow. Getting old is not for sissies, as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir opined years ago, when I was still in the golden glow of youth. I thought it was funny then.

The Captain's sitting at the desk, I can tell from the muted tapping noises coming from the computer's keyboard. Nobody surfs – an appropriate verb -- the Internet like that man. He deletes "history" so I can't tell exactly which sites he's visiting. That started the day I gently made fun of his obsession with Tetris sites. I'm pretty sure he now hangs out on chat sites for world-class sailors. He writes his own blog, too, and actually gets quoted "anonymously" from time to time in newspapers and yachting magazines. "The Captain's Tale" is off best-seller lists now, but still does reasonably well thanks to Amazon. Daniel also manages this literary "brand" and online business finances. All in all, he's not doing too badly for someone over 180 years old, if you count his birth date. The Internet has transformed him into something Jonathan, Candy and I never could: A very modern man and a savvy marketer. Well, we don't care about the marketer part. Just the 2009 part!

These thoughts race across my mind until the wave hits me again, ending my brief reverie. In a flash it all comes back. I can see the angle of the sun, the cocky posturing of my nocturnal visitor. The enjoyment he feels at the terror on my face. Panic rises in my throat. "Daniel?" I thought I was awake, but I must have slid back into the void, into the reality of that day, when I was so paralyzed by fear I couldn't even call for him.

I must sit up and deal with it, even if I can't sit up. But Daniel's there now, before I ask or think again, sitting beside me on the bed. He is so handsome, my Captain, dressed in his contemporary Chinos and white Polo shirt. From LL Bean, of course.

"You are so young, my love," I say sadly, reaching out for his hand.

He gazes back at me, a tender look on his face. The Captain can say more with those blue eyes and eyebrows than I can in 1,000 words on my laptop. He waits, knowing I will be annoyed if he too easily guesses I need help just to move – because then I will be upset that I know that he knows that I think I am too old. That's the foolish old-woman logic, anyway, and Daniel tries to abide by the unwritten rules of my declining years. I am ashamed of myself, but before I can even apologize for what I thought and I might have said, he leans forward and kisses my lips.

"And so very, very fortunate, my dear," he whispers softly into my mouth before gathering me in his arms and settling the pillows comfortably behind my back.

"Am I too old to ravish?"

"Hold that thought," Daniel smiles, and vanishes momentarily before reappearing – as he has for 40 years now – with fresh-brewed coffee. It was always Folger's until Martha died, because that's what she drank. My true love switched me to a very stout French roast in the mid-80s. When coffee became vogue thanks to Starbucks, he had Candy import an espresso machine from Italy. They laughingly claim the machine actually cuts my coffee consumption in half. But what does Admiral Muir know? She drinks rotgut at the Academy and worse on sailing vessels.

"Were you reading my mind?" I feign casualness, not really thinking about the coffee.

"No, your thoughts found mine," he replies gently. "You are most welcome for the coffee, but I know what today is. We will get through this -- together, Mrs. Muir."

Such playful use of my truly legal name suggests I am still young to him, still an equal and not a doddering old blonde with a bad case of osteoporosis. Does that make sense, I wonder? Ordinarily he refers to me as "me dear, my dear, my love, Carolyn, and the perennial favorite, 'Madame.'" I twitch involuntarily. The therapist Daniel and Jonathan sent me to calls it trauma-twitching, a sub-conscious attempt to avoid unconscious feelings. Daniel takes the cup from and sets it on the nightstand before gathering my hands in his.

"The dream came back, very early this morning. You were restless, and said it hurt to move, so I gave you a pill, remember? I couldn't leave you there, even in slumber. I've been brooding over you all night." Actually, he doesn't say this. I feel it, sense it in my more limited mortal mind. His choice of thoughts is appropriate. Ghosts cannot remain solid for prolonged periods of time. Nor do they sleep very deeply. No doubt he left our bed once I truly fell asleep, pacing the widow's walk, the balcony, still blaming himself for everything that happened that horrible day. Brooding. His choice of words is not descriptive. Obsessing. Tormenting. Despairing. This is what he feels. I know my words well.

I know my husband better.

Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes but it doesn't work. I see the tears anyway. Before I can do anything about them, the blasted phone rings. Usually he just ignores it, a firm believer in caller ID. The 212 area code is a dead giveaway. This is a call neither of us would wish to miss.

"Elissa?!" The sadness instantly vanishes from his voice. She does that to him. No matter what else.

"No, I had to wake her up with the Espresso," he jokes. "The usual, for a morning here. You can't even cut it with a knife. Next I'll have to cart her down the stairs and into the blasted sailboat!"

"And you away from the computer," I hear a chuckle from 300 miles away. "I know you won't cart your precious laptop within 10 feet of water."

"Alas, my darling, there are some problems technology cannot master nor time erase. Just a minute, I'll put her on."

He hands me the cordless, kissing my forehead.

"Mom! Happy birthday!"

I gaze at Daniel as my hand entwines with his. He winks and wipes a tear from his eye.


	3. Chapter 3

I remember nothing after that. After I fainted. Dr. Feeney tells my mother later this is nature's way of protecting people who've experienced horrible things. I'm not so sure. Even now, as an old woman, I have nightmares that don't make sense. I startle easily. There are aches and pains that don't add up. Every year, around the time of my birthday, I cry without obvious reason, refuse to leave the house, cling to Captain Gregg. Startle at routine noises. Forget where I am. Am enveloped in the strange sensation I am watching myself from outside my own body. Sometimes I wonder if Dr. Feeney had thought to send me to counseling I might have remembered what happened to me, and dealt with circumstances gradually. I am pretty sure if events had been any less in traumatic, as they say today, Daniel somehow would have erased them from my mind. He cries, still, because he could not. Keep me from harm, I mean. He tries to put a happy stamp on my birthday celebrations – the kids don't know, and Martha and my mother are long dead. He avoids making love to me aroud time of year because it makes him sob, afterwards, when he thinks I am sleeping. There was nothing Captain Gregg could do for me, before or after that day, except love me, and there is nothing he can do about this central fact. Nothing. Forty-one years later, he remains as tortured by the events of that day as I am. He deals with his powerlessness by making it his own, by raging. I tell him: How could he have known what was happening in his own front yard as he and Jonathan wound through the pines on the bluff north of Schooner Bay, searching for arrowheads for a boy scout project? He blames himself. I blame myself. Martha blamed herself. Thank God Candy cranked her tinny little stereo so high that day she never heard her mother scream or the screech of tires on gravel as the car sped away, towards Keystone. "Let it be," Paul crooned as I was abducted. "There will be an answer, let it be."


	4. Chapter 4

I am largely insensate in the terrible days following that horrible birthday. Martha feeds and bathes me. Daniel holds me. My mother hovers. She can't figure out which to deal with first -- the fact her daughter has been destroyed or, the inexplicable reality Carolyn sleeps with a poltergeist. Fortunately, Mom's dispatched Daddy and the kids. When I think at all, and I really don't, I imagine they're in California doing the Disney thing.

I lie motionless in bed, my mind watches safely, but pensively from afar. My eyes stare blankly at people who seem to care for me. I will my physical self not to acknowledge Dr. Feeney's presence. I know he's there, but I don't live in my body anymore; it exists only as an inconvenient appendage that forces people to bother with me. I try to hide the doctor and shines lights in my eyes. The brightness hurts, but the pain is singular in its expression. "It's psychogenic amnesia," my mind hears the doctor tell Mother. "We just don't know enough about it to do anything for her except care for her physical needs and tend to her emotional ones. Make her feel loved and secure."

What happened? My mind seems clear, but my body looks pretty bad when Martha pulls down sheets to bathe it. Then I remember that I don't care. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with me.

There is constant arguing between Mother and Daniel. He tells her to just hold my hand and be still. I smirk, in my mind. She doesn't know that each evening he slides his arms around me and gently carries me to the side of the ship's wheel, a hand-spun wool blanket wrapped tightly around me. Together we sit and the only sound is the roar of rock-laden waves below. Daniel strokes my hair and caresses my face. This is my body's one secret and central fact. Perversely, it needs Captain Gregg. More than once, I feel his warm tears fall on my face, but my face is not me, I don't exist. Still, I burrow instinctively into the comfort of that warm chest, where my new self sleeps until the light prods it rudely awake into a glimmer of reality that hurts my eyes.

They close. My mind is a ship, slicing pleasantly through white-capped waves carrying me further and further from shore.

"Madame." The voice is insistent. "Madame." I can't escape. I don't know anyting about the rigging on the sails. My mind can't turn because the voice is at the helm. I can't outrun it, blast! I frantically try to steer clear. My mind turns, and suddenly I am a woman, not a ship. I make port in the same harbor where I have sought refuge in the dark. I feel the tensile strength of familiar arms gathering physically around me. "Madame," the Captain repeats quietly. "There can be only one captain on any ship, and it always will be me. It's time to leave here. We must steer a course for where you belong, for now." I am me again, and I tremble uncontrollably in this new berth. "We're safe here," my mind screams at his. "We can hide here, on the sea, forever." I'm not sure what I'm afraid of, but I know nothing can find me when I'm sailing with Captain Gregg. I fall backwards into a jumble of pillows, sheets and blankets. "Time to wake up, my darling."

I am in bed suddenly, and jerkily turn my head to the side. Martha is trying to feed me, and I don't want to eat. "Miz Williams!" I hear her call excitedly. "Look who's back." I turn my head petulantly, and vomit all over myself. Something is wrong. I search Martha's face, pleadingly as she tries to clean me up. My mother is suddenly at my bedside, wringing her hands, shaking her head back and forth like an eraser rubbing furiously on a sheet of paper. "Dr. Feeney can't be right about this. He can't!"

"It's all right, Mrs. Muir. Everything's ok. You're safe now. You're here with us. You've been asleep for a long time." Martha turns to my mother as perfunctorily as she would Jonathan's scraped knee, only her voice is truly angry. "Don't scare her, she's trying to come around. Dr. Feeney is an idiot. Carolyn's been throwing up for at least six weeks. This is the Captain's child," she tells my mother in matter-of-fact but no uncertain terms. Martha daubs a damp cloth across my face then leans forward and kisses my forehead. "Go back to sleep dear," she whispers. "She doesn't know what she's saying, and now's not the time for you to worry about a thing. That old salt you're so fond of will take care of everything."

"Who are they talking about?" I wonder dispassionately and nod obediently before I close my eyes. I sleep again, for what seems like ages. Time passes as I snuggle in the Captain's embrace.

I awaken again only my mind is back where it's supposed to be, on top of my neck. I have become me. What time is it? Is Martha still there? From a distance, I hear a conversation. An argument. My mother is incensed. The Captain sounds bellicose, and thunder rumbles. Emily Williams is not cowed by the phenomenon. "I will not be bullied by an inconvenient ghost," she blasts back. "Nor I by a harridan whom I, of necessity, must accept as a temporal grandmother to my first-born! Shove off, m'lady, and anchor elsewhere in this house!"

Does more time pass? My mother is drinking coffee, and it smells terrible. I sit up weakly, as fast as I can. Daniel grabs at my shoulders and holds my hair behind my head as I retch uncontrollably over the side of the bed. I can't handle this. It is too much. My mind tingles, like an arm that's gone to sleep. My body is out of control; I can't stop heaving even when nothing comes up.

"Coffee!" I hear my mother sputter. "Coffee never made her sick before!"

"That's because this is my child, not his!" the Captain roars as he uses his hand to wipe spittle from my mouth.

From afar I hear a door open. "Out! Both of you, now! It's time for her bath. And if I hear one more word out of either of you I'll have Constable Peavey guard the door so you can't get in, Miz Williams. As for you, Daniel Gregg…what is it Jonathan says? Keel. That's it. I'll put a keel so strong under your ship that the only course you'll be steering is the one right up to the wheelhouse!"

"Keel-haul, it's keel-haul," the Captain sputters.

The pregnancy with this child will be difficult, I consider dispassionately as Martha bathes me. For starters, I'm past the point of remembering when my last period began. I haven't for five years now. The Captain can't father a child – or can he? I don't even worry. With spirits, there are some stones best left unturned, certain logic best unexamined. Besides, he's technically dead and death is the opposite of life. He cannot impregnate my physical body. Wait, that is redundant. Bodies are always physical, and the Captain is really not.

Something horrible has happened, something that has nothing to do with coffee or Captain Gregg or my mother.

I sleep through Martha's bath. Again, some time I cannot measure passes, then more time.

I can't consciously cope with the little life my battered body, unbidden, now cocoons.


	5. Chapter 5

Elissa arrives in six hours – in time, she says, to buy us all dinner at the Rockland Yacht Club. I'm honored and flattered. Summer is yachting season, and my redheaded daughter has an extensive clientele at Manhattan Sailing. The opportunity cost of her visit here is probably around $5,000 in lost revenue. "Deal with it, mother," she tells me primly over the phone before hanging up. "One-day sailing adventure off Long Island Sound: $5,000. Drive up the coast to celebrate with your crotchety parents – priceless!"

"Not!" 10-year-old Elias chortles in the background. "She's lying, Grandma. We're flying into Portland so she doesn't lose too much work." I'm not under any particular illusion that Elias is all that thrilled about my birthday. To him I'm a sweet old lady he loves a lot, but Daniel is the grandparent extraordinaire who only looks old but has the strength and endurance of every boy's hero. Elias, aka Danny Boy, worships him. Daniel, aka Captain Grandpa, practically forgets everyone else when Elias is on board. The two are building a small sailing boat in the workshop next to the house, planing wood furiously and scrutinizing drawings. Unfortunately, that's all I understand of shipbuilding and I have no desire to learn anything at all about rigging and sails. Neither the interest nor the desire to practice knots, either. When he was little, "Midshipman Elias Gregg" would beg me to let him tie me up in the chair so he could rescue me from pirates when his grandfather wasn't around.

So Elias will stay through the summer with us. I'm very grateful for his presence although he's not my singular joy. We have older grandchildren as well, after all, but they're not as enamored with Schooner Bay's remote location and Daniel's stern visage and antiquated ways.

Elias, on the other hand, wants to move to Schooner Bay for high school and live with Daniel fulltime. "I need a man in my life," he told Elissa. "And you're never going to have one." Elissa is a lesbian whose one half-hearted attempt to be straight for Daniel resulted in the son of a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman uninterested in fatherhood. What that was about, I'm really not sure. Daniel never had an issue with his daughter's sexual orientation. Pompous peacock that he can be, he fought with his daughter about femininity, womanly graces, and dainty manners befitting the fairer sex. Somehow he didn't care she would never yearn for the caress of a man, only that she was incapable of behaving like a lady.

Our daughter wore a dress once – to her first communion – before switching permanently to topsiders and khakis. Fortunately for the peace and tranquility of Gull Cottage, Elissa never found a local girl to bring home, but then, she never was there. Home for my beautiful daughter was the deck of a sailing vessel on the cold, gray Atlantic, and I worried every second she was out there, Daniel not withstanding. Under Daniel's devoted tutelage, the child out-sailed Jonathan by the time she was 14. She also developed her father's rolling gait and propensity to easily anger, stubbornly insistent she's always in the right. Command presence, I think they call it. Noblesse with honor.

"Aren't you glad I'm more like Grandpa than mom?" Elias innocently asked one day, unaware his beloved grandfather still visits lightning bolts, thunder and torrential rain on anyone who displeases him. I wonder what he'll think some day, when Elissa fully shares her grandfather's true identity with him.

Elissa. Is she the blessing wrought by the horror of what happened on my birthday so long ago? Or, did Daniel really father a child? Martha and Daniel swore my vomiting preceded the attack. I'm staring again, sitting on the front porch with my head on my hand. A car drives by, and I startle. My heart beats fast, even though the vehicle whizzes past us, not even slowing to allow its occupants a good look at New England's "most-haunted" house. "Easy, my dear," Daniel murmurs, materializing at my side. He slides his arm around my waist and pulls me closer. "The wind is picking up from the East, and the barometer is rising." I say nothing. "Can I get you a sweater?" I shake my head.

"Would you like to at least talk about it?" He sighs, and joins my in my morose gaze at the distant Cliffside. We both know he's saying the right thing, thinking the right thing, only neither of us really wishes to do the right thing – really feel the brunt of the horror visited upon us that day. Try to lay the past to rest, where it belongs, and live fully in the moment of Elissa's visit. Get over it. Really.

"We must make the attempt, Madame. Our years here are numbered."

"So? What does it matter? If our years are numbered, why bother?!" He doesn't really have an answer, although I know he feels resolution sufficient unto itself.

"Are you ready?" No. No I'm not, nor will I ever be. I shake my head furiously, harder than my mother did the day of my awakening. "Can we just get this over with?" I cry, and wrap my arms around his neck, pulling myself up into the softness of his sweater. "I don't want to go back, I don't want to see her or even part of what happened to me!" But I can already feel time dissolving, and when I open my eyes again, it is the early 1970s and the plaid pants I wear are disgustingly loud even though I am pleasantly surprised by how attractive I still look.

Every year he brings me back here, allowing me to relive only what I can tolerate. At first I thought it was a cruel thing to do, helping me restore my memory so I can weave "the coherent narrative" trauma specialists today find so important. "I am right here, with you, m'dear," Daniel whispers. "I am beside you, always."

But so is he.


	6. Chapter 6

They find me later that night on the beach, cowering between the boulders on an inlet just north of Schooner Bay.

This is what I learned, months later.

My clothing isn't torn, just disheveled. My hair and makeup are a different story. One look in the bright moonlight is all it takes. Claymore tells Constable Peavey to watch me while he goes for help. Catching me is pointless, he says, it will only terrorize me more. Claymore understands this. I won't let either of them touch me. I don't even recognize them. Carolyn Muir is dazed, like a wild animal that knows it's about to be shot, Claymore comments aloud, to Peavey. Only I don't freeze. I run away, and I reek of alcohol, so they suspect I am drunk until Ed sees the look in my eyes. By this time, I am knee-deep in the tide, running parallel to the beach, toward Gull Cottage. The water is freezing. I barely feel it.

Claymore hightails it to the nearest beach house, and calls Martha. Seconds later, the Captain materializes.

The look on his face is terrible, Claymore tells me later. The ghost of Gull Cottage doesn't care that Ed Peavey sees him or, that this simplest of kind, gentle men is petrified by the enormous clap of thunder pealing overhead. Daniel is too far gone to control his feelings.

I don't want to be touched. I am dirty, very dirty. Without a thought, I dive out, toward the ocean, knowing the sharp tug of the receding tide will pull me swiftly away from fear. For a moment, I am safe, submerged where nobody can see me. I hold my breath as long as I can, but a sob surfaces before I do.

Saltwater fills my lungs as the undertow does exactly as I wish, hurtling me toward the solitary oblivion I desperately seek.


	7. Chapter 7

I remember fainting at Gull Cottage. Martha told me later I was heavily sedated for at least four days after they found me, stumbling terrorized upon the beach near Schooner Bay. At some point I was released from the hospital to my mother's care and brought back to Schooner Bay. That, of itself, is a remarkable fact and more a credit to my mother's womanly intuition than my Captain's thunderous persuasion. At first, my parents wanted to bring me "home" to Philadelphia.

I have to give my mother credit here. Martha said Captain Gregg wasted no time making his presence known to her on one of the few occasions she left my bedside at Mass General. I smile as I recollect Martha's version of that day's event, even though it really isn't funny: Capt. Gregg, frustrated by his inability to care for me and supervise my treatment directly, materialized in one huge thunder clap right in mother's hotel room.

She didn't even blink, Martha told me. "That is one of the most immature things I've ever seen one of Carolyn's suitors do" was all she said. With that, Gull Cottage was in and Philadelphia was out. Decisions regarding all of my care suddenly became mutual, even though mother was well-aware my ghostly paramour knew little of 1970-ish medical protocol.

Martha felt it best to leave me largely in the dark about the circumstances of my immediate abduction. It took me years to pry out of her everything her boyfriend, Constable Ed Peavey, confessed to her soon after I returned to Gull Cottage. My housekeeper would only divulge this:

"It was horrible, Mrs. Muir. I heard car doors slam, and the screech of tires, but as soon as I got out there you were gone. I yelled at Candy to turn the blasted stereo down. She'd already stuck her head out the window to see who was screaming. You so seldom raise your voice to anyone but the Captain so we didn't even know that was you making that horrible sound.

"I ran inside and called Ed. Candy ran to find Jonathan and the Captain. Everyone in Schooner Bay was out looking for you within two hours. But neither Candy nor myself knew what the car looked like, and no one reported seeing you with anyone. It's not like you would be hard to miss, dear. A beautiful, blonde woman being dragged by the hair by a man -- ? The strangest thing was that your Captain didn't care who heard him shout or bellow orders that day. Those who saw him arguing with Claymore knew exactly who he was. One of them, a resident of Schooner Bay."


	8. Chapter 8

I never told Daniel the entire truth about our move to Gull Cottage. My looks and demeanor were conducive to him drawing his own conclusions, and I made no effort to disabuse my dashing specter of some very flattering (if self-serving) assumptions:

Innocent? Check.

Beautiful? Check.

Naïve? Definitely.

Womanly? Of course.

Why Maine? D-E-X-T-E-R.

I think it's the "naïve" part that cinched the deal. Naivety requires protection, as does innocence, and both of these presumed characteristics played right into Daniel's need to be a strong protector. Perhaps he was blinded simply by his own love for me, but Capt. Gregg never asked why a Philadelphia society widow would seek anonymity in a backwater like Schooner Bay, even in such a magnificent ship as Gull Cottage. . . writers don't need that much solitude but soul-mates don't require explanations.

Nor did he ever ask why I seldom talked about my 10-year marriage, preferring to let Martha's scowls speak for themselves. The Captain never even worried that my dead husband might unexpectedly materialize, with reasons of his own for haunting me. I was certainly "all over" Vanessa and other rivals for his affection, and they were dead, too!

Daniel could love a woman who was loyal enough to foolishly stick with a wife-beater (this, a correct assumption) but spunky enough to try to turn tables on a poltergeist.

Martha presumed I got lucky after lying, philandering Bobby Muir ended a loveless marriage by inadvertently smashing into a tree while driving drunk.

Bobby Muir, she and everyone else privately acknowledged, was the only loser in this equation; a cheating, no-good playboy who died and left his widow to her own, unsought good fortune. This is what my parents thought. This is what my in-laws knew, although they weren't allowed to view the body. "Carolyn already has identified his remains and wishes that everyone else remember him as he was." To most, it was such a blessed tragedy that few in Philadelphia ever questioned my ongoing lack of eligible suitors. Who could blame me for enjoying my new status? Women in those days were not expected to have sex drives, and I already had two beautiful children. In my circumstances, who could ask for anything more?

No one. Except, of course, me. Bobby didn't die all those years ago in Philadelphia. Even as his casket was lowered into the ground, he was safely ensconced somewhere in the United States under a federal witness protection program. Why he merited such a grand deception or new life, the feds never said. All I was permitted to know, the marshal patiently explained, was that Robert Muir wasn't coming back because he was legally dead. I had the choice of taking the kids and joining him in heartland obscurity or, publicly acknowledging his death and ending his tenure as beloved family man and shining star in my life.

Guess which I chose?

I suppose it makes me sound cynical and very jaded, but it was impossible for me to resist the chance to simultaneously bask in everyone's sympathy without consciously wishing Bobby ill. Divorce was never an option for me; Bobby had frequently and vociferously threatened a custody battle to end all custody battles, and he well knew I would do anything to keep the kids from learning of my hidden bruises. Thus I was stuck, an eternal victim, until Bobby handed glorious martyrdom and freedom to me on a silver, governmental platter.

There is no doubt in my mind that whatever Bobby did to merit inclusion in the witness program probably revolved around a very nefarious act for which he later turned state's witness. His only redeeming gesture is that after years of shady dealings, broken dates, and friendships with questionable individuals, he at least thought to invite me to his exile, from where he probably assumed we could the fruits of a Swiss bank account even the feds couldn't track. He was just jealous and possessive enough to want me with him, although he'd long-ago convinced me no other man would ever want me.

So, with the benefit of his miserly life insurance, I hightailed it to my own new life in Maine, to a spot I was reasonably sure Bobby would never think to find. Captain Gregg was the pleasant hitch to all my plans. I really did have no intention of ever sleeping with a man again, or of ever taking my chances again with the institution of marriage. Quite literally, I'd buried the past without the man. Instead of a rose, I broke the clods with my unhappiness. Never again.

As every reader of good ghost stories and mysteries knows, the past always comes back to haunt you. "And it has," I thought before I fainted that terrible day. I do remember one other thing, one horrible detail I never shared with anyone.

"Why, Bobby!" I asked as he drove off with me, slap marks reddening across my cheek.

"You made the wrong choice, lady." There it was, the famous Bobby Muir temper. "I'm going to do to you what you did to me. Then we can really bury the past."

"I'm not afraid of you any more," I sobbed, sorry as soon as I said it.


	9. Chapter 9

It is so hot in the Captain's cabin that all of the bedroom windows are open. It's almost midnight, but the delightful ground roast is doing its work and I am wide-awake, sipping lukewarm coffee, watching with amusement as my spectral co-author becomes increasingly animated. Over nothing.

"Nay, Madame, I will not allow a woman on board my ship even if she's only sailing on your typewriter. Especially in a public magazine!" The verbiage thunders right past me. Does he know how ridiculous he looks, wearing a wool jacket in 88-degree muggy weather? I lightly recommend, no gently command that he remove it. "Aye, aye, Madame," he replies seriously. He's so absurdly magisterial, caught up in indignation about a fictional woman on a ship he never sailed, that he fails to notice my fingers have ceased their clacking on the typewriter's keyboard. The blasted jacket lands squarely on the blasted sofa. Daniel pushes the sleeves of his sweater up his forearms, revealing an abundance of seriously thick, reddish-blonde arm hair. So much detail for a mere illusion.

Fine, I think. He is nothing if not magnificent when he paces marvelously to and fro like that, a wonderful sight for widowed eyes. I might as well enjoy the show. After all, females are his favorite bone of contention in any story we co-author. The verbal tempest continues, unabated, only now the Captain's shaking his fist in the air. He pauses, momentarily distracted by the lightning now suddenly forking jaggedly across the Atlantic. Daniel is not one to miss a storm, especially one he predicted. The curtains billow at full sail as Gull Cottage leans directly into the wind.

Daniel spins the ship's wheel, his gloriously muscled back on prominent display. How delightful he looks without the jacket, how arousingly unafraid he must have appeared thundering orders from the helm of tall ships during such tempests. I sigh wantonly, and push the chair resignedly way from the desk so I can stretch. So magnificent, such a command presence. Thunder indeed defines Captain Gregg. I wish I could have him.

But at 35, I'm washed up, flotsam and jetsam on the shore of meaningful relationships. And he's a ghost. Sailing over there at his ship's wheel, oblivious to me. Enjoying fantasies about womanless ships cutting smartly through foam-capped, storm-tossed cloudy green waves and other annoyingly cliche compound-modifiers.

He knows I think of him on the increasingly frequent nights I touch myself, when I can no longer bear the slow build up of love and lust we can only deny for so long. We share carnal dreams neither of us will acknowledge in the light and logic of day. Loving a ghost is problematic, lusting after one is even worse. There is nothing ennobling in unrequited desire. It maddens me, and causes us both to erupt over silly matters. During the day there is so much distance between us, so much formality. Captain Gregg seldom drops his guard, even when I catch him staring at me.

But now, as the gale pummels our private schooner, I am a real-life, flesh-and-blood woman aboard our ship in my time. Why should we only play cat and mouse when our eyes are closed? There are other ways, I think. Daniel is too distracted by the storm to notice I am now outside with him, my nightgown flapping between my legs.

I reach boldly out to touch the steely muscles so prominent beneath the sweater covering his back – then draw my hand tentatively back. Odd, he usually senses my presence immediately when we're so close. I hear his sharp intake of breath. He knows. His hands fall from the wheel and he clenches his fists at his side.

"Don't." He still faces the roaring Atlantic. He won't turn to me, but even in shadow I register a look I haven't seen since he made me cry the night of our arrival at Gull Cottage. He's angry, sad, puzzled, concerned and vulnerable all at the same time. Flustered. He doesn't know what to do. Only this time, I completely understand. Daniel is so afraid of failing me in any arena he won't take a chance on the most fundamental playing field of love. The man who can pour Madeira into a wine glass and drink it doesn't know if he can touch humans, doesn't want to touch humans. To fail would be to lose his last vestige of perceived humanity. He's not worried about my ability to live with incorporeality – he's worried about his.

"There are many ways to satisfy a woman you allow aboard your ship." I suggest piquantly, through tears. For the very first time in my life, I am absolutely sure I know what a man – this man -- needs, and whether this fact is very sad or very ennobling – I'm unsure!

I leave him no time to react. Instead of his back, I cup the Captain's face with my hand. Instead of air, I feel a warm, very substantially bearded chin and two very, very soft lips. They are pliant under my thumb's caress, parting reflexively as he gasps. My hand doesn't move until I pull him out of profile and down towards me, replacing fingers with my lips. I am mildly annoyed when he resists the hint of my tongue by breaking the embrace, pushing me away, hands on my shoulders.

The old Carolyn, rejected and rebuffed so many times by Bobby Muir, would have accepted this as proof of her undesirability and embraced the anger and powerlessness the move engendered. Instead, perhaps empowered by the Helen Reddy anthem of playing softly on the radio, I end this nonsensical adventure in spiritual nobility.

"I am the Captain on this ship, mister!" I break his light grip on my shoulders. I stroke my hand lightly yet deliberately across his trousers and find exactly what I expected. He pulls me desperately to him and within seconds, we come in each other's arms, through our clothes, shuddering violently against each other. Tellingly, the waves crash loudly below in the greatest sexual metaphor known to mankind.

"I've never, never…been completed by a man like this before," I whisper into Daniel's chest before I realize what I am saying too embarrassed even in spontaneity to speak in anything other than romantic euphemisms. He tightens his arms around me and kisses the top of my head. "I knew I was your first, Madame!"

"You are my first everything," I tell him.

Bobby is really dead to me now, laid to rest by a kiss on my hair in the middle of a storm by a ghost who is alive. This is my fantasy.


	10. Chapter 10

It's very hard to drown yourself in the sea, even with broken bones, exhaustion and an undertow tugging at your life. When I surfaced that night, gasping instinctively for air, Captain Gregg plucked me from the tumult of the tide, against my battered will, and carried me away from the certain promise of oblivion.

So, I lose myself from bed now, diving into the churning recesses of my own mind. This is where I hide when Dr Feeney stops by to check in on me. He guesses I'm five months pregnant now. I think mother conveniently spiked my tea with a sedative, but I startle anyway when he touches me. Thunder rumbles, and the good doctor remembers all of the rumors he's heard about Gull Cottage and what happened the day of my abduction. Hurriedly, he leaves the room. Daniel takes my hand and kisses its palm.

From a great distance, I hear muffled laughter. Martha's making small talk with my mother about Jonathan and Candy. I worry about the kids but I can't help them. Daniel is both mother and father now. The kids think a stranger robbed me and beat me up, but Captain's and Mommy's baby is okay. Daniel tells them my mind is hurting now, and they have to give me time to heal. Unbelievably, he sings them to sleep every evening after reading a chapter from "Two Years Before the Mast." In the morning, and after school, he listens to their worst fears and dries their tears. "We'll get through this together, mates," I hear him say time, and time again. The idea of Daniel singing sailors' ditties to children is the only thing that makes me smile. Martha says he's a real crooner.

Nobody knows who attacked me so brutally. For awhile, stranger-danger permeates the entire town. People lock their doors and peer through windows, scanning the streets for strange cars. Suspiciously, Captain Gregg tells Ed Peavey to leave me alone and let the matter drop. Two weeks after my abduction, a badly decomposed body washes up on a beach 25 miles south of Schooner Bay. Somehow, the constable convinces everyone they know it's my attacker because I identified his tattered clothing. The man is buried, nameless, in a pauper's grave. Schooner Bay soon takes my pregnancy in stride, closing ranks as only small townspeople can do when a family is at risk. Jonathan and Candy hear nothing untoward from classmates. It's presumed I will marry and quickly divorce hapless Claymore when the time is right.

Only Captain Gregg knows the truth. I imagine I was lying on a gurney that night, waiting to be x-rayed, drugged and insensate, when Daniel gently overlaid his my mind with his. With deliberate slowness, he entered me, bearing the weight of my troubled dreams on his arms, like a considerate lover. By the time he withdrew, he knew. The doctors were counting my fractures and consulting with specialists in Boston about stitches when Daniel made sure my own husband could never rape me again. That's what I think, how this story should end.

Tonight, after midnight, we sit on the front porch watching the full moon fall silently below the distant cliffs. The sound of the surf lulls me. I'm almost asleep, tucked warmly into my chair when it occurs to me --

"How did you know? When did you find out?"

"Did I, Mrs. Muir?" He repeats the question softly a second time, and I know we will never speak of my deception again.

When he carries me upstairs an hour later, I refuse to let go as he lays me in our bed. He tries to unwrap my arms from around his neck but I pull the Captain down with me, and he sinks into the downy softness of our marital bed. Hours later, in the pre-dawn stillness I awaken. Daniel's hand is on my stomach. The baby is moving. The Captain's smile is enchanting as he feels the child for the first time. It's a minute before he sees me watching him and he pulls quickly away, afraid of what I might do or think. Silently, I reach for Daniel's hand and return it to the vicinity of my lower abdomen, where the baby's movement is clearly visible. For the very first time since the attack, I forget the evil look of desire on Bobby's face. There is only the Captain's abundant joy over the infant twirling deeply within the recesses of my body. He traces the movement of tiny fingers and stubborn heels with his fingers. What can only be a bottom swishes boldly just below my navel.

I recapture his hand, moving it slowly over one big swell of flesh and up to two others, also visibly enlarged. Daniel's eyes widen as I pull his palm from one swollen nipple to the other. "Lock the door," I whisper. Our eyes join in greater surety than any physical expression of love before he kisses me, deeply and we are out at sea, once again, sailing where no one can ever find us.


	11. Chapter 11

"Mom. Wake up. We need to talk."

I open my eyes. Two unwavering, very blue eyes stare kindly at mine. Elissa sits in a chair she's pulled bedside.

"I'm really sorry to wake you up. I know your birthday always wears you out. But Dad and Elias are out on the water, sailing. We can spill without worrying about Dad deciding he needs to accidentally disappear and inadvertently eavesdrop."

I smile, and for the first time today, it's not wanly. Daniel has never lost his propensity to invisibly snoop – or to justify it by claiming it his nosiness is actually for the "greater good." He made the kids crazy growing up. He probably affected their nascent sex lives, too. Nothing like necking in the back of a car, wondering if your ghostly dad is watching.

My subsequent laugh is all the encouragement my 40-year-old daughter needs. She crawls up next to me in the big bed, as Elias calls the old antique Daniel bought in Bristol "back" in 1850. She plumps a few pillows and sits so she can stare down at my face. Instinctively, I try to arrange a few pillows myself, but my arthritic shoulder and arm will not cooperate. Elissa pulls me up, and then decides the conversation requires face-to-face interaction. After arranging me on the pillows, she reseats herself in the chair.

I wait. Elissa is usually disarmingly direct, like her father. Today is no exception, but this has neither the look nor feel of friendly frankness.

"I know, Mom." I've never seen her look so serious, and Elissa is not a frivolous child.

"Know what?"

Elissa doesn't miss the sudden, involuntary twitch in my shoulder.

She sighs, breathes deeply then glances at Daniel's surrogate, the telescope.

"About why you're always so sad on your birthday."

For a moment, the waves stop roaring. Mundane household noises recede. The pounding of blood in my ears is all I hear. To my everlasting chagrin, familiar tears pull at the corners of my eyes and my upper lip starts to tremble. Elissa reaches for my hand.

"It's not okay, but it's okay, Mom. I've known for a very long time."

She waits, patiently, for me to recover. Elissa is taciturn by nature. Pregnant pauses do not compel her to talk. Logical rejoinders fail to form on my tongue.

"Known what?"

My redheaded daughter does not like drama. She does not mince words.

"That you were kidnapped and viciously raped almost nine months to the day before I was born. That Dad's not really my baby Daddy, as they say today. That genetically, I'm identical to Jonathan and Candy. Which leaves just one paternal suspect."

Here, she waits. Her grip on my hand tightens. "Are you okay?" she asks, finally.

"Are you waiting for me to ask how you know?"

"Doesn't matter really, does it?" This would sound like a cliché, coming out of anyone else's mouth. Bu this beautiful woman, Elissa, daughter of a woman who plays with words for a living, never minces them.

"Every thing about you matters, Elissa. Whatever else, you are my truest child and Daniel's singular pride and joy."

Tears flow too freely down my face, and I finally reach for Elissa. This is the truth, the only one she really needs to know.

She gathers me gently into her arms, but buries her head in my neck just as she did when she was little. Finally, she cries. Despite my creaky bones, I rock her gently in my arms as she sobs. I stroke her unruly red curls and order is reversed. I'm the parent again. Elissa is the one who needs comforting. "Cry it out, sweetheart. It does matter."

She sniffs, and raises her head. "You're not mad?"

What should I say? I'm dumbfounded but I also want to tear my hair, wail and gnash my teeth, rewrite history, go back to five minutes before she entered my room. Stop the freefall of emotions I can't quite untangle.

I want Daniel to be her father. This redheaded beauty acts like him, looks like him. She was conceived in love, not on the floor of a cheap hotel room as her mother fought for her life. She couldn't be. I don't want her to be.

I didn't know.

"Why should I be mad just because you're evidently as good at snooping and keeping secrets as the bombastic ghost who's your true father, no matter what?" I've recovered enough to at least act like a mother.

"Oh, honey, you are my daughter, regardless of who your biological father is. I don't look at Jonathan and Candy and see Robert Muir any more than your real dad does. Look at me, Elissa!"

It occurs to me, suddenly, that for forty years, Daniel's been trying to bring me to the point Elissa's just explained to me. That tragedy has its own redemption, even after the worst shipwreck. It takes my breath away, this sudden surety. I want to feel Daniel's arms around me, now. I want Daniel, the ghost who resurrected everyone in this family, not just me. First in 1968, when he got the kids to finally mourn the loss of their father, and then me, twice..

But now, my job is to keep the focus on Elissa.

"Sweetie, I wouldn't change having you for anything in the world, even if I had to relive that day 100 times."

"Dad knows, doesn't he?" Her surety about Daniel's awareness of her true parentage, surprises me again

"Elissa, I'm not sure not even I knew who you father was until you told me."

"Mom," she both laughs and sobs. "Did you really think a ghost could make babies?"

I consider this, seriously. It certainly feels like he can. There's always a pleasantly warm, trickly feeling when I head to the bathroom after one of our numerous lovemaking sessions.

"Actually, yes. Maybe that sounds like denial to you, but Daniel kept yelling at Grandma, telling her to shut up every time I urped. Coffee made me sick for the first time ever. Can you believe it? They actually fought over how my morning sickness was supposed to be. They thought I couldn't hear them, but I did. Your Dad made it sound so obvious, so logical. I was so out of it that I couldn't remember when morning sickness really began. Martha must have just backed him up."

Daniel and my housekeeper. When faced with a common enemy, the two sparring factions at Gull Cottage finally stood on common ground.

Martha carried innumerable cups of tea to my bedside, patiently bathing me and combing my hair. Navigating the treacherous waters between Daniel and my mother. She kept them both in line each time mother came back, too. Watching carefully over Elissa in the days following her painful birth, right here, in the Captain's quarters, she never let me doubt for a moment which redhead sired the redhead in my arms. Martha and Daniel must have conspired as they carefully supervised my recovery. Worried over Elissa, too, about what she might think growing up in the shadow of such a terrible day, with a mother irrevocably scarred by the attack.

"You don't remember much about that day, do you?"

"Oh, Elissa." This is too much. She pulls me back to the present and into her arms and suddenly I am the adult child again.

"No, I don't," I say as evenly as I can. "Every year, around this time, you father takes me back – literally – to that day. He wants me to see what happened, to remember so I could move on, move beyond what your real dad did. To build a life that's not predicated on, on, what happened."

Rape. I can' say that word. Physical abuse. Even clinical terms are dangerous. Psychogenic memory loss. How can you explain something like that even to your grown child? She doesn't need to know all of this.

"Mom, I want you to know I never felt unloved or unwanted. That may have had a lot to do with Martha and the Captain, but it also says a lot about how you raised me and loved me."

She watches, to see if I am absorbing everything, then continues. "Even Jon and Candy don't know. They're just like you. They think walking through walls is normal, that ghosts can do anything. That the Captain's my dad."

I blush. I know what she's implying and what Jonathan and Candy wickedly still imply about my love life with a spirit. But Elissa isn't trying to be humorous or salacious.

"This family's been through enough. My sister and my brother had a hell of a time after you were attacked. Candy felt guilty because she played her music too loud. Jonathan blames himself for making Dad go hunting for arrowheads. I used to feel guilty just for being born."

Used too? How long as she known?

"How do you know?" There, I finally say it. How does she know what I didn't know?

"I got really mad at you when I was about 15. Jonathan heard my crying that I wished I'd never been born. He didn't exactly yell at me, but he got mad. He said, don't you know what Mom went through to have you? She almost lost you after that man attacked her –"

Elissa pauses. I hold my breath.

"Mom, I didn't know. Jonathan thought I knew, but I didn't know anybody attacked you. So I played along and pretended that I knew, but kind of led him on. Then I asked Dad what happened. He was speechless at first, but he sat me down and said yes, someone had attacked you but it didn't affect your pregnancy. He kind of told me everything –"

"Except who your father really was?"

"Mom, come on. Of course he didn't tell me who attacked you. Besides, I still thought he was my real dad then. Do you think the Captain wants any of us kids to know our own dad was a thug? He swore he was my Dad and I should put such thoughts from my mind immediately."

Which begs a very serious question. Who in Schooner Bay betrayed me? I don't even ask. Elissa continues. Like her Dad, she seems to read my thoughts as they form.

"It was Grandpa, mom. I was in my twenties." She looks past me, then back again. "I went to see him in the nursing home after Grandma died. He was crying, he didn't know what he was saying. He talked about how Bobby really killed his own mom, by coming out of the witness program and raping you when she'd barely finished mourning his supposed death. He blamed you, too, for not telling Grandma Muir the real truth. For lying to everyone just so you could start again."

"Elissa, this is important. How did the Muirs find out? I didn't know they knew."

"Grandpa said your dad came over one night, mad. They were fighting because Grandpa Muir wanted to take Jonathan and Candy on a trip to Disneyland. The Muirs knew about your attack and thought they should help with the kids. Grandpa Williams told him that took a lot of nerve, after everything his son put you through."

I my heart stops here. I never knew that they knew. They never let on. Ralph and Marjorie treated Elissa like a princess, just like one of the "real" grandchildren. Despite of, or because of?

So many people and one spirit. No matter what, they all did so much to protect this beautiful child, and to help me recover to mother all three of my beautiful children. Tears pour out of my eyes, now, as it suddenly occurs to me not one person in Schooner Bay ever, ever, ever wondered aloud how a ghost could father a child. Not a single child in Schooner Bay ever, ever, ever said anything to Jonathan, Candy or Elissa. That means only one thing: Not a single grown up – not even Mrs. Coburn – ever opened their mouth about my attack. Or mentioned the unidentified, fish-picked body that washed up on the shore two weeks later.

If they had, Elissa would have known. If she wants to, she'll ask me. But she doesn't. Perhaps both she and the Muirs assume Bobby disappeared back from whence he came.

"Mom."

Elissa interrupts my reverie.

"I want you to understand why I'm telling you this."

Now I am the one who waits patiently.

"I know what happened to Dad – well, maybe to both my dads. They couldn't move on, either in life or death. Bobby Muir's finished business now, but you and the Captain aren't. I mean, you're not exactly very young, and as much as I love the man who raised me, I suspect he's really only waiting around for you –"

"Elissa Rose! You're worried that I might haunt Gull Cottage?" We both laugh, but there's an undercurrent of seriousness neither of us really ignores.

"We all need to move on, Mom, whether it's on this side or, the other. Which, I guess, kinda leads me to your real birthday present: I've sold my business. Elias and I are moving back to Gull Cottage."

"As in, back to this house?" I'm dumbfounded. And exhausted. This is too much for one day.

"Well, Elias is real fond of his grandfather. He doesn't understand Grandpa goes when you do. I know, I know. You're still young in your own head. But when you die, I seriously doubt anyone will see Capt. Gregg again either. That's what Jonathan and Candy think, and I agree. We all think the 'flaming lesbian's' son needs his Grandpa.

"I talked to Dad, and he thinks it's a splendid idea. Sometimes I think he loves Elias more than me, and Elias almost as much as he loves you. I'm not hooked up with another woman right now, and with all of the summer sailors flocking to Maine every summer, it just seems like –"

"Fine, fine, I mean I'm delighted." And I am, a huge smile plays across my face. "There's just one thing, though. One more thing. How can you be sure Daniel's not your biological father?"

"I lied to her, G-ma." Elias stands in the doorway. Behind him is Daniel. When he tugs on his ear, I realize things are about to become even more interesting.

"Let's let your Grandmother rest, you young scamp. To quarters, now." Daniel sternly orders. Elissa glances at Daniel, and leaves with our grandson. I can tell they're both biting their tongues in half, to still them. But an order's an order, and --

"And not a word out of you, either, Madame." Without further ado, Daniel lifts me out of the bed and carries me to the ship's wheel, wrapping me tightly in the blanket he leaves there for just such purposes. He kisses me lightly on the lips, and I see Elissa's beautiful blue eyes shining down at me from Daniel's face.

"I'm her father, blast it. You can tell by the eyes." Vaguely, I laugh but sense he's about to violate my direct orders to never mess with my mind. I don't even remember falling asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

They say you are every one and every thing in your dreams. When I have nightmares about someone attacking me, for example, the attacker is really my subconscious trying to grab my attention so I can attend to psychological business-at-hand.

That's what Daniel says. Did he read Freud, in the original sometime after the turn-of- (last)-century? Or did he pick this tidbit up while snooping around my new psychologist's office in Bangor? With a ghost, one can never be sure. I'm positive, though, Daniel's right about this. Each violent, pernicious dream sends me spiraling ever closer into the heart of my storm, swirling ominously around the feet of my dream-self, threatening to sweep me out to sea. Paradoxically, it's the anti-depressants I now take which have made such a difference in my dreams. The psychiatrist who prescribed them says they allay the depression enough for my mind – and psychologist – to begin to really deal with the consequences of that horrible day. "It's a memory, Carolyn." "No, doctor, it's as if it happened yesterday."

The psychologist, who I see briefly, really isn't any good. Perky Carolyn Muir Gregg charms him, and he's more than a little awed by my literary successes. I'm pretty good at deflecting conversations before they become too painful for me. Surprise! I'm an excellent interviewer who knows how to keep the focus off of myself. What I do glean from Dr. Whoever, however, is a sense of how trauma and tragedy and indeed our very childhoods overshadow and affect our conscious minds. "Everything you see around you is really a shadow world, Mrs. Muir. Everybody relives their childhood issues – to a certain extent --in their adult lives, everyone has an invisible agenda. If you think of it, the only free will anyone exercises is the choice to leave this baggage behind, to embrace the ghosts of the past in order to live fully in the moment."

"Remember, Carolyn, there's no such thing as accidental speech!" Another therapy bromide that's worked its way into my daily routine despite the fact I only went to five therapy sessions before quitting. Daniel won't give it up. "M'dear, Freud uses the word 'unconscious' as an adjective. He speaks of your 'unconscious mind.' Jung, however, views the word 'unconscious' as a collective noun. You must chose, my love, between the sea as metaphor or simile." Now that's quite literary of Captain Gregg, and it shows a far greater tolerance for modern psychotherapy than he'd care to admit. Perhaps Elissa's right. He'll do anything to exorcise the demons of memory before my time comes. Does he know something about the afterlife, about the skein between life and death that he's never shared? Is he the one who goaded Elissa into yesterday's heart-to-heart?

Is my turmoil so evident that little Elias lied, and told Elissa his class was studying family germs? That's not a funny thought, but it is amusing and downright scary to think a 10-year-old is smart enough to run DNA tests on his own family. How he thought that one through, I don't know. Elissa says she loses sleep at night, marveling at what a great little forger the sneak is. She regrets not monitoring his savings account more closely. Neither of us knows how he found out about my attack or why he felt compelled to sneak behind everyone's back to ask the question no one really wanted answered. Daniel says Elias has known for three months now. Strangely, knowledge of his true lineage has only bonded boy and grandfather more than I ever thought possible. Daniel's advised us all to shove off and give the "lad" time. We can't ask Elias how the hell he learned there was even a shadow of a doubt about his paternity. "In due course, Madame."

Last night I dreamt I was on an interminable cruise, suffocated by friends and family I didn't know. Getting off the ocean liner was a huge fiasco of nonsensical baggage (no accidental speech here!) and inane customs requirements. But, at the last minute, I grabbed Candy's hand (my younger self?) and ran back up the gangplank to the horror of everyone else in the customs line. We cheerfully greeted the stewards who had fawned so obsequiously over us as paying guests. Now, they had little interest in us, even though we assured them we could pay our way by doing odd jobs. Suddenly, the ship faded away and Candy and I were standing on the most incredible tropical beach I've ever seen. There was a light breeze blowing. The sand was white and there were beautiful, low-lying yet snow-capped mountains just beyond the peninsula. "I'll give everything up just to stay here," I said to Candy. "There's no going back for us." I was 35 again.

For the first time in 40 years, I was out of the shadow lands, living in a crystallized moment of happiness that was neither metaphor nor simile – just itself, suspended in a moment of pure bliss. Candy disappeared, but my young-self kept running, kicking at the surf and delighting in the sandy breeze. Happy. No past and no future, save the bearded man opening his arms in front of me. "This is eternity, my love."

But my happiness ends with a huge clap of thunder that startles me so I awaken in another shadow land, this one between dreams and reality. Daniel sits on the bed, staring at me, his thumb rubbing my cheek. "Are you all right?"

"You didn't send me that dream?" He gives me a few seconds to realize where I am.

"Nay, Madame. I was ruminating about boy Elias, and how to best apprise him of my true nature. That scamp." Here Daniel smiles, broadly, marveling at the man in the boy who calls him Grandpa.

"What were you dreaming about?"

"Eternity." Daniel caresses my face before running his hands down my shoulders, my arms, and back up to my withered breasts.

"Madame, you are the eternal to me. Infernal, eternal, woman. Adjective." He smiles at the gauntlet he's just thrown.

For the first time ever, I forget he's a ghost. We're remembering a time and place where we both just young, and in love, when he was my suitor. I believe the phrase back then was "eternally female."

"Man. Noun. Incredibly sexy man. Compound modifier," I suggest.

Suddenly, he gathers me in his arms and I bury my face in his neck, just below the beard-line, as I sometimes call it. Gently, we rock back and forth like a little boat tethered to a dock.

"Daniel," I whisper. "Tomorrow. I think we can head back tomorrow. If Elias has the guts to finesse a DNA test and live with its results, I think I can muster the courage to resolve the past that brought him here."

It is a fact of my life that I can only be so close to Daniel for very long without wanting to kiss him. This moment-in-the-moment is no exception. When I raise my face, Daniel captures my mouth forcefully with his and lowers me back onto the white sands of the sheets.

"This is eternity, Carolyn."


	13. Chapter 13

"Grandma."

Elias' freckles are large, this close.

"Hi sweetie." I kiss his forehead and tussle his wavy hair, desperately hoping I don't have that old-lady smell I so hated in my own great-grandmother.

"Belay that, Grandma."

"I don't report to midshipmen," I admonish him gently. "But you are welcome to the brush on the dresser."

Elias smells like pine trees, the sea, fresh wood, the air at dawn – like his grandfather, as a matter of fact. He ignores me, crosses to the binnacle (who knew it really wasn't a telescope? Who cared?) and pretends to focus on clippers at sea. Just like his uncle did, all those years ago.

"Are you mad at me, Grandma?"

"For what, Elias? How could I ever be upset with you?"

"For hanging out with Grandpa more. I mean, I don't think you're boring or anything. But he doesn't act like an old lady, I mean person. He gets around and everything and he's the only grownup brave enough to tell Mom her slip knots are wrong."

"Elias, I would be worried if you thought hanging out in Gull Cottage with me was more fun than sailing that little sloop you and Captain Grandpa bought last year."

"It's not a sloop –" He stops.

"You're not really here to talk about sailing, are you child?"

"No Grandma. You're just the only person I can talk to about the test." Fortunately, Daniel's apprised me of Elias' little science experiment. He's actually proud of his grandson, "the little scamp." Sometimes Daniel doesn't think things through.

"Elias, did you really figure out how to test your mom's DNA against Aunt Candy's? Why would you even think of doing something like that?"

"There's this boy in my science class whose dad owns a company that tells people who the baby daddy is. Mom and Aunt Candy are always talking about Captain Grandpa and Grandpa Muir. I told my friend I was tired of phone calls about who mommy's daddy really is. So he told me to pretend I was testing about family germs and they both laughed and rubbed the q-tips in their mouths."

My head begins to hurt. Who knew what, when? Are 40 years of lies, suppositions, and assumptions falling squarely yet unfairly on the shoulders of a small boy who desperately loves his Grandpa?

"Grandma, I lied. That's what I really want to talk about."

Elias stands and paces like his idol.

"I tested because I wanted to know if it's true. That Grandpa is really a ghost."

There is a shimmery feeling to the air, and I know instantly that Daniel is invisibly listening in. A thousand responses rise unbidden, to my lips, but I wisely shut my mouth and wait.

"I mean I know he's my Grandpa, but all of the moms in Schooner Bay act all funny when they see me walking around with him. They say it's not natural, behind my back. They talk about Grandpa like he's dead. I told Uncle Jonathan and he got all funny acting and said it was just scuttlebutt."

"I didn't want to ask you or make Grandpa mad, so I told Brian I wanted to know who my real dad is. You know, mom's a lesbian so that made sense to Brian. He says everybody wonders about that on the playground, so I didn't have to lie about the Captain being a ghost maybe."

"Elias." Here I stop him. "Did you show the test results to anybody?"

"No. I just told them our family germs are all alike because mommy's right, whatever that means."

He's a small boy, I remind myself. I doubt any of this makes any real sense or even matters to him – except for the ghost rumor.

"Grandma."

"Elias?"

"That's really Grandpa in the picture downstairs, isn't it? That's not really his Grandpa. It's him. Grandpa is a ghost. The tests were different. Mommy has ghost genes that Aunt Candy doesn't. But I told Grandpa everybody has the same germs because I didn't want him to know I was snooping around, like it would make a difference or something."

He pulls a ratty piece of paper from his pocket. "Here Grandma, you do something with this. All I know is Grandpa really is a ghost, so maybe now we can do more cool stuff together."

I listen. Indeed, the air is suddenly still and there is a heaviness to the air that presages every temper squall I've experienced since 1968. Indeed, thunder rumbles ominously.

"Elisas," I suggest. "I'll look at this later. I'll keep it safe and we can talk about it more tomorrow. But right now, I need you to run downstairs and tell Grandpa I said you are not to go out on the water until the thunder stops."

He is barely to the stairs when Daniel materializes at my shoulder and tries to snatch the pieces of paper out of my hands. The genetic results are not actually interesting. It's all in codes, but the codes are different for Candy and Elissa.

I know, without a doubt, that when Daniel Googles them later tonight, Elissa's numbers will translate into Celtic origins.

"This is wearing me out, Daniel." Tears, and more tears. He takes me in his arms and carries me to the bed. I hear the door lock by itself.

I am wracked by sobs. Of relief. "Captain?"

"I don't think we need to spend any more time in the past."

"As you wish, m'dear." But he's not listening, really. He's smiling, wiping his own tears.

"Madame, I didn't think it really mattered."

"That you're a ghost?" We both snort with laughter. I am young, suddenly, laughing at the typewriter, joyous over another collaboration.

"That I'm a baby daddy, to use young Elias' vernacular."

"Obviously the most virile man in New England, past, present or otherwise."

"Married to the most beautiful woman in New England, obviously. You look positively radiant, my dear. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were 35, maybe 40, tops."

"That's a memory, Daniel. Like everything else. A memory. A place we don't need to visit again."

We're alone again, Daniel and myself. In the present, fully, with a freckle-faced little boy and his wild, red-headed, seafaring mother. The panic and dread I've carried all these years is gone. Like that. Just like in the novels I used to write. Running on the beach means throwing sticks for Scruffy, not running away from Bobby. All past.

Daniel tosses the test results into the fire.

"If you don't mind, Madame, I have pressing business down the hall, in young Elias' room."

I raise my eyebrow, quizzically.

"About the Ghost and Mrs. Muir."


End file.
